I’ll just do a little checklist here. We’ve got enormous teapots pouring out molten metal, a glutinous tar baby, Alice poking around a Victorian imagining of the Orient with a unicorn on a stick, and a Chesire cat who’s stayed largely unchanged from how he appeared in the first American McGee’s Alice even though he was killed in that game. Spoiler!

It’ll be swell if this game is good, both because we’ll be able to have fun poking through these wonderful environments, and I’ll be able to use “Carroll Singing” as a headline. Screens after the jump.

I agree. I never had a problem with the gameplay in Alice. It wasn’t groundbreaking, but it was a solid third person action/adventure/knife-throwing-thing. It had a steep difficulty curve near the end of the game though, around the Red Queen’s maze.

I’ve got to admit I got stuck and gave up on the original. The environments were great, apart from the gameplay it was fantastic. I’ve always found third person platformers to be really difficult so it’s probably my problem as opposed to the games.

I got to the final boss in the original and stopped after dying a certain number of times. It was too difficult. Maybe not too difficult in absolute terms, but definitely too difficult to waste hours trying to essentially figure out a way to unlock the endgame cinematic when I’ve already played through the entire game. I finished the damn thing already, give me my prize and let me go on to do other things!

That was the exact moment I realized the “old school gamer” in me is dead. Evolution FTW.

I actually went with “female” specifically because it was the most neutral gender label I could come up with. I think fem… wome.. gi… whatever you want to call them are humans, too. I don’t know that of course, but I strongly suspect it the case.

Woman is a favourite of mine. Easy to remember, few syllables, little connotation. But it’s too easy to hijack this sort of nonsense, and it wasn’t my intent when I only desired to make a joke, or observation. This whole speaking for everyone really isn’t me, unless I became the borg when I wasn’t looking – it happens.

I am generally glad to see that I wasn’t the only one who ogled the dresses though. :D

Cynics everywhere. For a shining, glorious second I’d actually seen a sort of gleeful future where we could see this sort of customisation as a good, even expected thing, that we’d be encouraged to invest in the characters that we played as enough that we’d see their visual design as much an expression of their character and personality rather than just an eyecatching model that remained unchanging forever.

Everyone else sees DLC. At once I feel guilty for feeling superior to that cynical outlook and naive for not wishing to believe it myself.

The thing is, I’d rather want a built-in dress editor, so that I can channel through it all the love I’ve got for the character and dresses, and then share them! So dlcs are my enemies. (And I also want a collectible edition with a throwing knife that magically return to my hand to be found inside the box. Or even a nice plain one).

Reach for the stars! They are ever within your grasp if you would but grasp!

Or, less theatrically, that would be totally awesome. I would all kinds of endorse that idea. Well, kinda. I mean I think the reason I like that they’ve put the thought into giving her different dresses is that it’s just part of furthering the illusion that the character exists beyond the game by showing that they don’t just have one thing to wear and nothing else ever. But also because I am not good at graphics. I quite like the idea of a fancy-pants designer making sure my character doesn’t look like she fell backwards through a clothes horse aboard the ISS, you know?

It seems that the dresses change accordingly to the environment. As you can see, the oriental areas have you wearing the kimono/dress hybrid thing with the bow on the back, while the factory areas have a sort of leathery bondage/welder outfit with the apron in the front.

I am glad that the fighting system in this game is Zelda-like. Had they chosen this to be a standard third person shooter, it would have been dumbed down to cope with consoles’ controllers’ inefficacy. A Zelda fighting system at least guarantees good fast-paced action which is the better of two evils (this is a UE3 game published by EA and released on all three platforms, so there’s no doubt they’re gonna make the PC version exactly the same as the console versions).
What I am not so glad about is the fact that this is, like I said, a game published by EA and released on all three platforms. There’s always piracy, I guess. Bulletstorm was a bad port of a good game, I really enjoyed the content, but felt no moral obligation to give a single cent for it.

Well, they’re alright, but they seem a little ‘generic black boot’ to me. Lots of buckles for extra goth points, but my own tastes lean me to something a little more colourful and decorative. Maybe a (slightly) toned down version of theselink to polyvore.com?.out=jpg&size=l&tid=19644531

Uuh… Umm… The original ones look more combat effective? I don’t know much about style on boots, specially women ones.

I had a pair of military boots last year and they were ridiculously comfortable, so whenever I see some that resemble them (I can’t find another pair like them), I miss them good ole’ boots. I also like goth women.

Whilst ordinarily I am all about the combat effectiveness of the protagonists outfits, I feel I’m allowed to make an exception for Alice, who feels like a far more decorative, extravagant character, and so her being somewhat impractically dressed doesn’t hamper my immersion. Fickle, me. But yeah, I hear you. Stuff’s subjective. :)

I feel sorry to say thiss.., but I think I have grown beyond the “horror” of these images.
Maybe is my exposition to the bad parts of the Internet, like 4Chan. But In some ways these images look like the stuff that would have scared my grandparent, but not me.
I feel bad about this, but everyday horror is more cute, much much more pink and cutesy, and also absolutelly vile, sinister.
Maybe we all have to grown beyond Tim Burton and Dx9 Deep of Field effects.

I never really felt the original was going for scary- not in the Creepy Gothic Artstyle, at least. No, it went for it’s horror when- SPOILERS!- you fell out of the universe, discovered that the Mad Hatter had nailed the Doormouse and the March Hare to a wall (a position from which they decided to deliver delightfully creepy advice), that the Jabberwock was Alice’s horror and self-loathing for burning down her house and her family (or was it just survivor’s guilt? I forget?) and that the final boss was Queen Alice turned cosmic horror. All in all it was rather effective, and I’ll be extremely disappointed if the sequel doesn’t top it in some way.

Oh, and if I recall correctly the Chesire Cat dies by getting stepped on, with pretty much no warning.

I think OMM’s main problem with the first Alice was the “American McGee’s” part – they marketed it as if Alice’s was a bog standard fairy tale story, only the ex-id whiz kid American turned it into something much more edgy and extreme. Which is complete bollocks, of course – so, yeah, OMM used to have a point back then (although I think trying to be funny hurt the review of a pretty enjoyable game).

I don’ really get the vibe that these lot here are trying to pat themselves on the back too much for endarkenifying Alice, so apart from quoting OMM to be cool, I don’t see the point of dredging up that old chestnut.